


inside your ribcage, there is a garden

by hiroshimalovers



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Depression, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, implied/referenced ocd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 19:47:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2594144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiroshimalovers/pseuds/hiroshimalovers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a field with flowers and it has been three years since the last body was buried.</p>
            </blockquote>





	inside your ribcage, there is a garden

**Author's Note:**

> see warnings, please.
> 
> This is quick and might be incomplete and missing many details. I apologize for vagueness and grammatical errors.

There is a field with flowers and it has been three years since the last body was buried. 

Grantaire feels the tug on his heart every time he walks by, every time he glances out the window, every time something reminds him of one of them. He drinks too much and will wake up lying next to Combeferres small blue flowers and Courfraycs bright orange ones twining around them. There are tears dried on his cheeks but he stands up as his breath catches in his throat. 

He goes home, to a small house where he sleeps on the couch day in and day out because there are only two bedrooms and three people, and Marius is fucked up enough that Grantaire doesn’t want to lie next to him at night (and he wouldn’t want to put anyone through his own nightmares, his messed up sleeping hours and constant smell of alcohol). Enjolras is Enjolras and he works as odd of hours as Grantaire but they aren’t really friends so Grantaire doesn’t bother answering. He tells himself he doesn’t mind the couch with it’s broken springs and the fact that it is slightly too short and every single day he wakes up with a crick in his neck.

Maybe, maybe he drinks too much sometimes and he definitely smokes too much but he works and he pays his fair share of rent (and oftentimes more) and keeps them stocked with beer and ramen. Grantaire is functioning, maybe not well, but he is not falling apart. He is held together even if some stuffing slips out occasionally. He is alright, he is alive and that’s all anyone can really ask for these days.

Enjolras doesn’t look at the field. His eyes avoid the carefully picked out flowers of each of his friends and he walks with his head down. He does not speak to change the world, he does not eat because of the taste. In the night, he drinks more coffee than he should and chain smokes to keep the ghosts away. Sometimes Grantaire sits and they sit in quiet understanding under the big tree or just on the back stoop of the house. 

Each and every day, he does the same thing, keeping a carefully constructed schedule and it is quiet and he only eats when the gnawing hunger asks him to. He knows it is good that he has his own room (how does Grantaire stand it, but then he remembers that he is never home) and it is good that he pays his rent most weeks if he doesn’t spend too much on books and his breaking book shelves that ache like his own back. He is getting old and it has been too long and he can’t forget Eponines dark laugh and Feuillys hardworking attitude but it is fading.

It is fading and he can’t stand it so he works hard to remember it. He got a degree in law, but he didn’t go into it and now he spends his days on forums about depression and a word document with two-hundred thousand words of trying to explain his love for them. His computer is old and Marius looks at him sideways and Grantaire fills up his coffee cup and it is not really the right way they should be living, in a way where they don’t talk to each other but it is a curious sort of codependence of checks and balances and silence and a vase with flowers, always full.

Marius does not work for money but each and every day, he goes to the cemetery and waters his friends flowers meticulously and pulls out weeds. Each and every day, he sits under the big tree and reads seven chapters of the book of the week, and he comes home and cooks with whatever Grantaire scrounges up and what is ripe in his small garden.

He does not work for money but he works each and every day, and picks flowers every three, maintaining a beautiful bouquet with all of his friends represented in it. It is his way of remembering, and neighbors walk by and compliment it. He ducks his head and thanks them and will give them a cucumber or a tomato if they are in season. He sleeps alone and screams and wishes for Cosette but she is not here, she is in England and he misses her like you miss a limb but Enjolras and Grantaire hug him tight when he begins to slip away. He’ll steal a cigarette from Grantaire and smoke inside, and pretend like something is different.

Once a month, he walks into town. Three thousand one hundred and four steps there and three thousand one hundred and four steps back. He buys seeds from the pretty women outside the hardware store, a pack of mechanical pencils and two hundred sticky notes. There is one thing for each of them. One plus one plus one is three and they are three (he does not think that there used to be twenty two of them and he would alternate between who to buy for or them all when he still had money). He clenches his fists and walks two thousand six hundred and twelves more steps to the front step.

The people in the town think they are an odd group and whisper in corners but they get used to it, both the townspeople and the three of them. There is an old couple who walks past the small house every day and they slow as time goes on but Marius always offers an awkward wave and a smile and they wave back. As time goes on, they begin to trade zucchini for green peppers and corn for squash and it is a nice series with soft words. Marius always gives a bright flower (either the tiger lilly of Courfeyrac or that purple vine flower of Eponine or even the sweet daisies of Cosette)(she is not dead but she is not there either) and they oftentimes slip in some milk from their daughters farm or fresh baked bread.

There is a group of schoolchildren who run down the street Monday to Friday but they stop each Wednesday afternoon and Grantaire pulls out his old acoustic guitar and sings to them, soft and loud and they ask cheerfully for more, and he obliges until it is time for them to run home to their mothers and father and he must work another shift. The adults are wary and come by asking questions and Grantaire fends them off with quiet answers and nice smiles. He offers tea and apples and they leave with soft mutters that maybe these people aren’t so bad and agreement that they are still a bit odd.

There is a boy, fifteen or sixteen who will climb up the big tree and will climb down to smoke with Enjolras and sometimes Grantaire and they both smile at him and Enjolras talks about idealism and depression and the boy nods. They part with a hug each day and if they worry about each other, that’s no one’s business but their own because neither of them want to come back one day and the other one isn’t there. The boy can count Enjolras’s ribs through his shirt and Enjolras carefully doesn’t mention the bruises that he can see and doesn’t count. It is a mutual understanding of different kinds of sadness and it is made of smoke rings and grass knots and old scars that they try to hide. The boy smiles and Enjolras smiles back and it is good to know that even if they don’t want to make an impact, they can help anyway.

The town gets used to them, can keep time with their periodic shopping trips and work shifts, and they get used to the town, and it is okay. They don’t fit in but they don’t stand out and Bahorels spiky red flowers bloom and then blow in the wind. Children button Marius’s carefully given out flowers to their shirts or weave them into their hair. Enjolras spends saturday afternoons in the summer braiding hair into colorful assortments. His is cropped short but he remembers many things and his hands are nimble from typing.

One day, Enjolras wakes up and he coughs, it is hard and hacking and Grantaire runs in with worry, and then comes back with water and cough drops and Enjolras takes them. He tells them it’s just a cold because Grantaire is already working too hard and Marius cannot upset his schedule to take care of what might be nothing. That doesn’t stop them from worrying and it doesn’t stop Marius from waking them all in the middle of the night with screams.

He is not sure Grantaire actually sleeps because he is always at his bedside or out working (because Enjolras can’t bring in much of anything and Marius can’t bear to sell his flowers). Grantaire stops buying beer and he grins and laughs it off but his hands shake and the aspirin jar is half empty instead of three quarters full. They can’t really afford more and it’s been two weeks and Enjolras’s cough isn’t getting any better. 

Grantaire tells him that he needs to go to a doctor and Enjolras mutters something about Joly and Grantaire just flinches away like he’s been hit. Enjolras pretends not to notice and the vase has been moved to his room, Marius bustling around like it is nothing. He hasn’t been out of bed in a week, and has slept too many hours.

The doctor comes and the news is bad and Enjolras shrugs because everyone dies, all their friends are dead and there’s nothing he can do about it anyway. Grantaire doesn’t cry but he freezes up and his back is tense. He leaves the room with quick short steps and an hour later (or maybe a day, Enjolras is losing time like no one’s business so they don’t have to know) the boy is there and his arm is in a sling, and Enjolras knows that his parents would never pay. The boy smiles and says R and Enjolras realizes that the other man is paying everything is working too hard and hardly even speaks but he can’t bring himself to talk to the other man.

He curls in at the corners and the boy comes once a week and they smoke together, and they can hear Marius frantically waving at the fire alarm. Grantaire drops his phone and it cracks, and is almost illegible. He doesn’t get a new one and Enjolras is weak and can hardly keep food down and Grantaire sighs and wishes that life was fair but it’s not. He doesn’t really sleep anymore, catnaps in between jobs but at least he is too busy to feel sad and that is good at least.

One day, he collapses in the middle of a shift at the local bookstore and the owner rushes to his side and pulls him to his feet, asking if he is okay. He says yes but the bags under his eyes betray him and the owner says, you should go home but he doesn’t because money is necessary for living the way they do. He smiles at her and goes on. There is nothing else to do.

Enjolras is fading quickly so in his waking moments, they begin a story about living in the past, with guns and weapons and Enjolras stands tall in red, leading them all. They are planning a revolution and Cosette’s dad is wonderful and it is almost like real life except they almost succeeded and Cosette stayed. 

The barricade falls the day Enjolras dies. He never finished his novel and it’s okay. Grantaire breathes in short gasps and Marius buries the body right next Combeferre. Neither of them shed a tear and they keep on going, slowly but surely and sadly and they were shadows before but they are less of them now. Grantaire is still working too hard and there is no food in the house and Marius laughs bitterly as a gun is pressed to his head and it goes off.

Grantaire is the only one left and he drinks himself into a coma and wakes up in a hospital. The boy (Gavroche, Gavroche the name finally stays) is there and he curses loudly and ‘you can’t leave me too’ so Grantaire doesn’t, he straightens up and buckles down and he still doesn’t cry.

Gavroche, sixteen and wild, moves in and Grantaire keeps working because now he has a kid to send to college. They are two years of hard work and Gavroche tends the flowers and they share a pack of cigarettes a day and Grantaire threatens the girlfriends and boyfriends and checks over his schoolwork.

They are both fucked up but only one of them is dying and it’s Grantaire.

It is okay now because they are clinging on for dear lives and Grantaire still sleeps on the couch but there are both inhales and exhales.

It is okay now because neither of them are who they want to be but they aren’t people they hate. (Gavroche is growing up and Grantaire has plateaued in silence but they are alive and it is okay).

It is okay.

Grantaire lives.


End file.
